MINIs, Cocktails, and Jukeboxes! Late pics from our show! Pic HEAVY!!!

[Jigenjuke]

Hi there guys, I've been posting but otherwise pretty busy.  I teach at a Jr. High School in Okazaki Japan.  Great place to live as the people here are great. 
We will be starting eight new projects.  2 of which will be touch panel jukes (17 inch or 19 inch monitors, haven't decided yet.  The next three (CHANGED TO FOUR UNITS)  will be micro replica cabinets with 8.4 inch monitors.  I think we have pretty much decided we like the Pac-man, Ms. Pac-man cabinet shape for these three project.  The final three will be micro cocktail cabinets with 10.2 (CHANGED TO 15 INCH MONITORS)  inch monitors.  Again I think the Pac-man/Ms. Pac-man cocktail shape will be the best.  Everything will be as faithfully replicated as possible, including mock scale coin doors and such (don't expect them to work though).  The joysticks and buttons will not be as small as blastAgain's Robotron replica cabinet as I want these to be as playable as possible.

We will be using MALA as a front end for the arcade projects and Freebox (NOW CALLED E-TOUCH) for the jukes.  We have so far received all of the PCs.  They are VIA EPIA M10000 boards with 1gig of memory and 60gigs of Hard Drive space each.  The cases for these ITX boards were wonderful, allowing us to make these projects as small as possible. 

I haven't been so good on taking pics of the builds as they go, but this time around I promise that we will be on the ball. 

We are still amassing parts and should be able to get started just after Christmas, but I promise I will post pics of the PCs and other parts we have as soon as possible. 

I have been pretty busy with Halloween at school, here is a little pic to tide you over till the parts pics come. 

And absolutely no jokes about me being Captain "Fat" Jack Sparrow please.  I know that I am a few kilos heavier than Johnny D.   

[BurgerKingDiamond]

you are lucky to live in Japan. I'm going there for 9 days for work in January (Sasebo, on Kyushu), but I heard there's nothing to do in that town. Supposedly Nagasaki is near by, I hope I get a chance to go there and find an arcade. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to spend any time in Tokyo 

[Rick]

And absolutely no jokes about me being Captain "Fat" Jack Sparrow please.  I know that I am a few kilos heavier than Johnny D.   

I was going to say, "Wow, Ringo really let himself go."

 

[Jigenjuke]

BurgerKingDiamond, Sasebo is a great place!  You can check out a few things here

http://www.sasebo99.com/english/ 

Too bad that you are not visiting in Summer though a little cold to be visiting Japan in January.  But there are lots of things to do.  Check the web and Youtube for Sasebo.  And by the way.  There are ARCADES ALL OVER JAPAN.  Even in small towns.

[Jigenjuke]

Hey there again guys,

As promised I have come up with a few pics of the PCs and some of the monitors we will be using for our projects.  The following three pics are going to go into the three micro replica cabinets.  I find the Via EPIA M10000 powerful enough to run jukebox software as well as most of the old school MAME games that we will be putting on the hard dives.  Anyway enough with the explanation here are the pics.  The glare on the Windows XP screen pic kind of washes out the color.  The picture does these no justice.  I will try to take better pics as I go along.  These three little monitors are also touch screen as well.

Jigenjuke

[Jigenjuke]

Everyone is sleeping so I am typing this on my iPhone.  I installed XPSP2, had some difficulty finding the SG3 unichrome drivers but with a little patience I was able to find one that worked.  The GBAadvanced emu works great as do the Nestor and SNEX9S.  My problem is MAMEUI32.  It is very slow to load and errors when I try playing simple games like frogger.  Anybody got any ideas?  Do I need to go back to a earlier version of MAME?  I would appreciate any help I can get.

[Bloinkxp]

For my itx's I went back to Mame .67 and .85.  Worked well for the classics.

[Jigenjuke]

Got it! Thanks Bloinkxp!  Now I just have to go back and track down all the parent roms for about 600 games and I will be ready to rock and roll!  Everything seems to be working great!  I need to set up my MALA front end for SNES, NES, GBA, Atari and maybe a couple of others.  Time to make some new layouts.  After all that is done I can feel pretty good about starting on the builds.  This Saturday I will take a few pics of all of the little ITX PCs lined up waiting for their project shells.  Stay Tuned.

Jigenjuke

[Jigenjuke]

OK guys, I know I am falling behind already but pics of all the systems are coming tomorrow. 

These three 8.4 inch touch screen monitors are going to be mounted in a horizontal orientation.  I wanted, originally, to mount them vertically but a decision was made to include some horizantal game that are emulated in MAME. 

Any suggestions as to which horizontal games ABSOLUTELY should be included in the three Ms. Pacman mini replicas?  Give me your ideas and thanks.

Jigenjuke

[Jigenjuke]

OK guys, sorry about the delay.  I have been pretty busy.

I finally got XP installed on all nine of the ITX systems.  I am pretty happy with how they turned out.  I installed

Magic Engine
MAME
Visual Boy Advance
SNEX9X
Nester

and

Freebox jukebox software

As a front end I will be using MALA.  I installed it and tried to run it on one of the machines.  The screen went blank and never came back.  I know it is not the monitor because when I plug the monitor into one of the other systems I have no problems at all.  I am not sure what is happening.  I rebooted the system and can't even see to get into BIOS.  The systems is running because if I leave it blind it will boot into XP and I get the XP loading sounds. 

Any ideas?

Also anybody out there with MALA layouts that they would like to share with me I would be appreciative.  I will not be using them in the systems, I just need some ideas for layouts.  Three of the systems will be running at 800x600 the rest of the systems will be running at 1024x768.

Anyway, here are the pics I promised.  I will hopefully be able to pick up wood this weekend and soon after that begin the builds. 

P.S.   I just got my iPhone so the pics are a little blurry.  Don't know how to remedy that now, but I will figure it out.

Jigenjuke

[Jigenjuke]

Here are the three new pics.  Build pics should be pretty extensive so stay tuned.

Jigenjuke.

[Encryptor]

Where did you get the monitors from?

Encryptor

[Jigenjuke]

Where did you get the monitors from?

Encryptor

Encryptor, they were originally used on Kuroneko Delivery routes.  Kuroneko is kind of like Federal Express or UPS in the states.  The touch response is quite a bit higher than any other touch panel that I have seen.  Can't use them for much as they are only 8.4 inches diagonal, but they are still pretty cool nonetheless.  Fairly cheap as well.  I think I ended up paying about 15 bucks a piece for them and I have 6 total in case I want to make more of these cabs in the future.

Jigenjuke

[Rick]

$15?! Where could the layman hope to find such a deal?

[Jigenjuke]

$15?! Where could the layman hope to find such a deal?

Hmmm, well Rick I am not sure that a layman could get their hands on these monitors.  Like I said the company Kuroneko uses them for a "POS" (point of sale) system to bring up route and customer information.  They just recently upgraded their systems and the Japanese Yahoo auction site has been swamped with these for about the last month of so.  I have been picking them up one at a time when they pop up, because I teach Electronics and English at a Jr. High here in Japan.  They make for good senior year projects.  I have six more that are mine personally, but our school has purchased about 200 of them.  I think that even if you were to pop onto the Japanese Yahoo Auction and get one shipping would be cost prohibitive.  If you really want one, I can look into what shipping would cost.  The main problem is I can no longer ship via surface mail from Japan.   

Rick, I just had a thought....  You may be able to hit up BlastAgain.  He lives in Tokyo and has quite a better selection of shops to go to for speciality parts. 
Things are going pretty well.  I went and picked up 8 4'x8' sheets of 16mm MDF last night and should be ready to start making router templates for all the projects.  I hope to start soon.

Here is another pic of three of the systems in action.

Jigenjuke

[Encryptor]

I might buy 6 of them if I could pick them up for $15. Nice deal. 

Encryptor

[Jigenjuke]

I might buy 6 of them if I could pick them up for $15. Nice deal. 

Encryptor

Rick, Encryptor...  There is a slight problem with just sending the monitors.  The power for the monitors comes from the power supply feeding the PC.  It is a very proprietary system, but if you are still interested I will check.

Jigenjuke

[Rick]

There is a slight problem with just sending the monitors.  The power for the monitors comes from the power supply feeding the PC.  It is a very proprietary system, but if you are still interested I will check.

Can you detail how power and video are provided?  For example, what are the power requirements, and what are the video input specifications?  I am interested, although, I have no idea what I might build with them.  (Obviously, an inexpensive touchscreen - even that small - could be used in so many ways.)

[Jigenjuke]

I might buy 6 of them if I could pick them up for $15. Nice deal. 

Encryptor

Rick, Encryptor...  There is a slight problem with just sending the monitors.  The power for the monitors comes from the power supply feeding the PC.  It is a very proprietary system, but if you are still interested I will check.

Jigenjuke

There is a slight problem with just sending the monitors.  The power for the monitors comes from the power supply feeding the PC.  It is a very proprietary system, but if you are still interested I will check.

Can you detail how power and video are provided?  For example, what are the power requirements, and what are the video input specifications?  I am interested, although, I have no idea what I might build with them.  (Obviously, an inexpensive touchscreen - even that small - could be used in so many ways.)

Hmmm...  OK guys, as I expected the shipping from Japan to the US is not very cost friendly.  It is a little over 6000 yen for me to ship one monitor.  This is about 76 US dollars.  add that to the 15 dollar cost of the monitor and I am sure that you guys could find a cheaper alternative in the US or online from China.  I don't know why but the Chinese seem to be able to ship to the states cheaper than we can.  Sorry. 

This for example I found on ebay...

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-8-inch-TFT-LCD-Color-TV-VGA-Speaker-PC-Monitor-/320581278660?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4aa4221bc4



Jigenjuke

[Encryptor]

Thanks for checking on it. It is a bit pricey. The main difference with the one you listed is that it's not a touch screen. It was worth a shot anyway. Thanks.

Encryptor

[Jigenjuke]

Well guys I　went out and purchased more wood.  I bought 5 more sheets of 4x8 16mm MDF.  Very expensive here!  One sheet is about 35 US dollars.  I　think fondly back to hours spent at Home Depot back home....  The service here in Japan is awesome.  They asked me where I　wanted it delivered.  The workshop I will be using is not mine.  Mine is much too small to be tackling this many projects at once.  Since I　head up the wood working club at the Jr. High School I　teach at I　decided to build these projects there.  I　will post pics of the woodshop soon.  I　drool over the size of the space every time I think about it.  The cost of land is at a premium here in Japan.  

Cheers

[Jigenjuke]

Hey there guys, I wanted to keep you posted on my progress.  I have made all of the cuts for all of the pieces parts that are going into these projects.  I still need to take pics before I start building.  Real life kind of got in the way again.  A fellow teacher I work with recently lost his 8 year old girl to an inoperable brain tumor.  I have been giving as much moral support as I can while trying to keep up with my own work, hobbies, kids and wife.  My heart goes out to him.  I don't know how I would survive the death of one of my boys....

On another note.  A lighter one as well.  In an effort to conserve space my wife has requested that the MAME machine I built for the kids be mini sized.  I thought about this and decided to just do a control panel that can be plugged into a slim height pc that will sit in the entertainment center.  The PC that I got my hands on is an NEC MATE MA21X.  It has a prescott P4 2.8ghz processor with 2 gigs of PC2700 ram.  The video card is a low profile 256meg Gforce card.  I was able to install windows on it and moved over all of their games.  I then plugged in my minipac from ultimarc and things seemed to be going well, but MAME doesn't recognize it at all.  I have tried all kinds of things, even reinstalling everything.  I just recently upgraded to MAMEUI 1.40.  Is there anything I am doing wrong?  Help would be greatly appreciated.

Jigenjuke

[Mr.Ian]

Have you tried plugging everything in, then just rebooting ?

I had the same issue with an ipac.

Love the project, and would love to get my hands on one of those monitors for a jukebox


Nice work, I love Japan, great place

[Jigenjuke]

Hey there Mr. Ian, yeah that was the first thing I　did.  I　think I　am gonna have to try and reload the USB drivers for the NEC and see what I　come up with.

Jigenjuke

[Jigenjuke]

  Hey there guys,

I didn't mean to leave you hanging for soooo long.  I finally had some time to continue cutting and assemble the first of nine cabinets.  The first four are Ms. Pac-man shape 30% (roughly) scale.  They are about 33cm deep by 26cm wide and 58 cm tall.  I really like how these turned out.  Here are some pics.  I am not really sure how I am going to mount the 8.4 inch touch screens.  I will take pics of the monitors and post them later in order to get you guys advice.  Anyway, I will be making three mirco cocktail replicas and then two Wall mount jukes, but I won't be able to post pics of those until much later.  Maybe a couple of weeks or so.

Anyway here are the pics of the first four cabinets.  If you look at the picture for cabinet 3 and 4 I put a chocolate bar in front of one of the cabinets for scale.  

Enjoy!  Comments, criticism, and fashion tips are welcome.

Jigenjuke

[Jigenjuke]

Hey guys, back again.  I have a question that hopefully someone here can answer.  I will be cutting pieces for the two 17 inch touch screen jukeboxes here this weekend.  I have de-cased the monitors.  I am using Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 17 inch units.  The picture is awesome!  I want to cut the viewable section into 1/2 inch MDF, then turn the MDF over and rabbit and edge for the actual size so that the monitor slides into the MDF and looks flush mounted from the front.  I will probably round the edge off on the front so that it looks nice.  I have an idea of how I would do this making two jigs (one for the viewable size of the monitor and one for the actual size of the monitor) and using a router with a flush trim bit.  Does anyone have links with pics and step by step instructions for this process.  I would greatly appreciate this help as I have never done this before. 

I really love the feeling I get when I start a new project. 

Jigenjuke

[Jigenjuke]

OK guys, back again with another question.  I am kind of wavering on how to mount these 8.4 inch touch screens into the micro cabinets.  I have posted a few pics to give you guys an idea of what I am dealing with.  The Monitor has a hinge which houses the touch screen cables, D-Sub15 cable and monitor power cable.  While this can be removed I think that it provides support to the monitor housing as it is made of metal and not plastic.  I was thinking about drilling holes through the back of this Cable housing and attaching it with screws into a bracket mounted inside the cabinet at the appropriate angle for viewing.  I am also posting a photoshopped mock-up to give you an idea of what I am talking about.  

Let the ideas roll please

[Jigenjuke]

OK a little further progress.  I got the top of the cabinets on, hinges on the backs, and the bottom marquee holders in.  I will be removing both of the marquee supports and using a slot cutter bit so that the marquee will be held in place with t-molding.  The control panel will also have a slot cut into it for black t-molding (I think but I am not sure yet).  All in all a good two days.  I have yet to mount the monitors and PCs, but these four cabinets are ready to receive the primer coats before the initial painting process begins. One of the cabinets will have micro Ms. Pacman stencils, and yet another will recieve Pac-Man stencils.  The other two will receive original themed artwork.  I haven't decided what theme yet, but I will post pics when things progress that far.  

On Wednesday I will start either the three micro cocktail cabinets or the two 17 inch touch screen jukeboxes depending on the help I receive from you guys in my earlier posts.  I'm a little tired but having a lot of fun.  Hope you guys enjoy.

By the way, the CPO that is on the control panel is not final.  They will have the smallest balltop that I can find here in Japan and 6 24mm push buttons.  The player 1 and 2 buttons will be Atari cone replica buttons (Due to the cost I decided against the Atari Cone Buttons.)  

[Jigenjuke]

Hey guys,

Back again with a little more progress.  Also notice that the micro cocktail cabinet tops are cut.  I have to make jigs for cutting the monitor opening, but I had fun today.

P.S. The one at the end of the row of Mini upright replicas is a Pacman cab.

Jigenjuke

[Bender]

That's an awesome little set there, my garage looks very similar to that
Can't wait to see more of the cocktail, get back to work!

[Jigenjuke]

Aye Aye Sir. 

Unfortunately I won't have any time till next weekend.

Jigenjuke

[THE POKER BRAT]

are you selling any of these lil creatures???

[Jigenjuke]

are you selling any of these lil creatures???

Hey there POKERBRAT,

I hadn't really thought about selling any of these little guys.  I think that shipping would be very costly as I live in Japan.  They are not that difficult to build and go to gether very quickly.  It took about 2 1/2 hours to cut the pieces and assemble the 4 micro cabinets.  I you are interested.  I could post some rough plans.  I am just happy to be working on projects again. 

Jigenjuke

[Jigenjuke]

I'd be interested in some plans if it's not too much trouble for you to post them.

 

Sure thing pinballjim,

Just give me till the weekend.  The 9th graders are graduating this week and I won't have a lot of time till Saturday.

Jigenjuke

[Jigenjuke]

OK guys, I'm back but I shouldn't be.  Today is the graduation ceremony for the 9th graders at my school.  I have been wracking my brains to come up with a way to make a scale model of the Pacman/Ms. Pacman coin door.  I want the coin returns to have slightly recessed dual USB ports for keyboard, mouse and USB HDD access and for easy access for addition of new games/music, but I want to replicate the hardware as nicely as possible.  I don't wanna do this half ass ed.  How difficult would the coin drop hardware be to model in modeling clay then paint it silver?  Also anybody out there wanna make a few really thin really small Midway logo coin plates for me  .  Ideas, people!  Help me with ideas>>>

Jigenjuke

I want these mini replicas to be as perfect as I can make them baring the 6 button control panel layout I am doing.  Both the Pacman and Ms. Pacman micro cabs will have stenciled sideart and kickplate art so stay tuned.  We're gonna have fun now!!

[Jigenjuke]

Well the graduation went smoothly.  I'm kind of a softy, so I stayed around for as long as was required and then excused myself.  I will meet my students again at the dinner tonight.  The ceremony is mostly for the kids and parents.  I took a few mock-up photos of the Pac-man cabinet let me know what you think.  

The button area graphic and the joystick graphic are going to have to be bigger, I know.  They are not to scale yet.

Jigenjuke

[Yvan256]

How difficult would the coin drop hardware be to model in modeling clay then paint it silver?  Also anybody out there wanna make a few really thin really small Midway logo coin plates for me  .  Ideas, people!  Help me with ideas>>>

Make what you want in 3D and have it machined out of black plastic?

[Jigenjuke]

How difficult would the coin drop hardware be to model in modeling clay then paint it silver?  Also anybody out there wanna make a few really thin really small Midway logo coin plates for me  .  Ideas, people!  Help me with ideas>>>

Make what you want in 3D and have it machined out of black plastic?

Thanks Yvan, but I am not even sure where I would start with that process.  Where would I go to get that done?  How much does the process cost?  Thanks for the advice.

Jigenjuke

[Xiaou2]

Silver or Gold paints usually never look too good / realistic.

 If its something simple and flat, you might be able to get away with aluminum foil glued down very carefully.   I believe they use this technique in model aircraft, to make the planes look like metal.  In fact, you could probably learn a lot more from their field as well.

 You might also look into Silver / Chrome "Leaf".  Which is a super fine foil that adheres to a special glue you set down.   No paint can touch the look of a good leaf job.  

 In the case of the midway logo.. you could then print on water-slide decal paper.
The water-slide decal paper is the same kind of thing they use on models as well.  Its razor thin. (make sure you get the clear type, rather than the hazy white kind)  
If colors are too transparent (because the stuff is so thin), you can overlap a few layers to build up the solidity.

 Bake Clay isnt too hard to work with... however, it can tend to deform when cooking.  Also, a lot of it is too brittle to be useful.  One tiny clank against something, and it might easily break off.  I made a bunch of really cool xmas ornaments once with them... and was sickened at how a tiny 2 inch fall caused them to shatter easily.  There are some higher grade clays, but overall, Id stay away.

 Probably are better off carving/sanding parts out of wood, plastic or metal, and gluing the parts on.
(Dremel / Exacto knives + Magnify Lens Hat)


edit:

 That Pacman looks like a horizontal monitor aspect.. instead of a vertical monitor aspect...

[Jigenjuke]

Silver or Gold paints usually never look too good / realistic.

 If its something simple and flat, you might be able to get away with aluminum foil glued down very carefully.   I believe they use this technique in model aircraft, to make the planes look like metal.  In fact, you could probably learn a lot more from their field as well.

 You might also look into Silver / Chrome "Leaf".  Which is a super fine foil that adheres to a special glue you set down.   No paint can touch the look of a good leaf job.  

 In the case of the midway logo.. you could then print on water-slide decal paper.
The water-slide decal paper is the same kind of thing they use on models as well.  Its razor thin. (make sure you get the clear type, rather than the hazy white kind)  
If colors are too transparent (because the stuff is so thin), you can overlap a few layers to build up the solidity.

 Bake Clay isnt too hard to work with... however, it can tend to deform when cooking.  Also, a lot of it is too brittle to be useful.  One tiny clank against something, and it might easily break off.  I made a bunch of really cool xmas ornaments once with them... and was sickened at how a tiny 2 inch fall caused them to shatter easily.  There are some higher grade clays, but overall, Id stay away.

 Probably are better off carving/sanding parts out of wood, plastic or metal, and gluing the parts on.
(Dremel / Exacto knives + Magnify Lens Hat)


edit:

 That Pacman looks like a horizontal monitor aspect.. instead of a vertical monitor aspect...

Yeah the monitor is horizontal because the screen is an 8.4 inch touch panel.  There will be juke software on these as well.

Jigenjuke